Natalie Wood’s Death Certificate Changed; Questions Raised About Her Mysterious Bruises at Death

Less than a year after the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department reopened its investigation into the 1981 drowning death of Natalie Wood—thanks in part to comments that appeared in “Natalie Wood’s Fatal Voyage,” a March 2000 *V.F.*article republished last fall—the cause of death listed on her death certificate from “accident” to “undetermined,” CBS News confirms. Sources close to the case told TMZ that the change was made because of bruises on the actress’s body that were “not necessarily consistent” with an accidental drowning. Sources also revealed that authorities are still uncertain how Wood fell overboard while on her yacht, Splendour, near Catalina Island. (It was previously theorized that she fell while trying to secure a dinghy onto the boat.) According to CBS’s Los Angeles affiliate KCAL, the L.A. sheriff’s department considers the case “open.”

For his March 2000 investigation, V.F. contributing editor Sam Kashner interviewed the former captain of *Splendour,*Dennis Davern, who reported that Wood and Wagner had been arguing before her fall. Wood’s husband, Robert Wagner, and her Brainstorm co-star Christopher Walken, both of whom were aboard the yacht when the incident occurred, are reportedly not suspects.